Tag Archives: joy

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Hello, Lovelies.

The oracle card I have chosen to guide us this week is ‘Joy’ from the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Deck by Tori Hartman.

If you read my forecast for March, you’ll remember thatMarch is all about creating systems and structures which make your everyday life more supported and sustainable.

So, what gifts does Joy bring for you this week?

This week is a week for filling yourself up. Worry less about other people. Worry less about being judged. Worry less about your endless to-do lists and all the things you want to change about yourself.

Instead, give yourself over to life.

Go live it. Right now. Even though it’s not perfect. Even though you’ve been waiting until some mythical things from the future align, or you’ve ticked off enough tasks to allow you to feel that you can deserve whatever it is that your heart craves.

Just go live.

Live with gusto.

Run around in the sunshine. Dance in the rain. Go for a bike ride or a swim in the ocean. Get a massage. Go play in a bookstore or library. Groove to funky disco tunes at home in your pyjamas.

Meet your friends for coffee and cake.

Be silly with your kids and giggle like a two-year-old.

Hold hands with your beloved, and remember all the things you adore about them. Put your phone down and actually spend time with your sweetheart. Look into their eyes instead of into a screen.

Cry in sad movies. Stay up all night reading that book you can’t put down.

Use that beautiful soap someone gifted you that’s too pretty to use everyday. Drink out of the good crystal or the best china. Wear what makes you happy.

Joy reminds us to live now. So go do that, okay?

Flipside of that? This week be mindful about staying away from people and situations that kill your joy. Make plans to enable this to be more permanent if you have reached a place in your relationship or your job where being there is stealing your soul, rendering you into nothingness or breaking your heart.

Supportive crystals this week?

Citrine helps us to bring the sunshine back into our lives, and to think with optimism and clarity! If you are ready to ask for what you need or to voice your thoughts and ideas choose a lovely blue Sodalite! Green Aventurine is the perfect happiness stone, helping to elevate our mood and our sense of gratitude for the everyday. Rose Quartz if you need a boost of love, kindness and nurture.

Helpful essential oils?

Young Living’s Joy or Believeessential oil blends, or a combination (or singly!) of any of Grapefruit, Basil, Geranium and Sandalwood. The Joy blend is fabulous if you are feeling anxious or uncertain, or a bit sad or stuck. It’s reassuring and uplifting; wonderful for gently shifting depression and self-doubt. I often wear it as a perfume. Believe oil is a super stress-buster that boosts feel-good energies and self-esteem. It smells so uplifting and pretty too. It’s my oil of choice in my diffuser this week.

Holding you, as always, in my thoughts, prayers and meditations, and intending for a you a life of abundance and joy, where you are no longer limited by your doubts.

“Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”
~ Judy Garland

“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”
~ Frank Zappa

Hello, Lovelies

Welcome to May! May is a delicious month, and her energies are kind, supportive and expansive. Let me share some observations about the energy of the month ahead, as well as a few suggestions for embracing all that May has to offer.

Cards for the Month:

I’ve chosen two cards for May for you: one from the Osho Zen Tarot Deck, and one from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle. Please note I don’t use these cards in the conventional way, but rather as a stimulus for channelled information.

Here is what I have received from each card:

“We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.” ~Evelyn Dunbar

May’s energies are encouraging us to share ourselves and our gifts with the world. Even if this is in the smallest of ways, we’re being asked to live more joyously, more authentically.

Most of us have hidden aspects of inner selves for so long that we’ve forgotten those parts of ourselves. Or they are dusty and rusty from lack of use. May celebrates the essence of 2016 and this new vibration that our world has moved into – collaboration, community, cooperation, connection, inclusion.

It isn’t just about what you have to share with the world. It’s about simply being more authentically you in the world.

Like toe-socks? Wear them with pride.

Don’t like coffee? Be a proud tea drinker instead.

Whatever your preferences, quirks or points of difference, May is the month to embrace them. And then, if you’re brave, be a little more public and a little more vocal about being yourself and doing your thing – without the need to validate, excuse or apologise.

If you have something to offer out in the wider world, know that there are others who are waiting for the thing you’re holding back. It’s time. Take tiny steps if you must but do put one foot in front of the other as May urges and cheers you on. May is a brilliant month for breaking through and developing some momentum.

Got something to launch? Hello, May! May is your month for unfurling those tightly held buds and beginning to blossom.

The main thing to embrace about May though is simply this: Just be YOU. Out and proud about being yourself. Shining from within, so that your inner light begins to light the way for others to do the same.

“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The second card I’ve chosen is Milk and Honey. This card reminds you that now is the time for incorporating activities into your life that nurture, sustain and inspire you.

May is a month for celebration of both the special and the ordinary moments in life. For feeding our souls as well as our bodies. For taking time to engage in pleasure and gratitude.

So often we rush through life, busy-busy, and forget to take time to enjoy the place that we live, the people around us, and all of the goodness life has to offer.

May is a faster energy month, after our April of being cocooned and going slow. Pay attention to your diet this month. Eat foods that heal and energise you, but remember to have the occasional treat-day, where you can indulge in the activities and foods that give you pleasure.

All this introspection, soul-searching and hard work is going to pay off, you can be sure of that. In the meantime enjoy the journey, or at least give yourself moments of light and joy amidst the everyday grind.

Best crystals this month?

Green Aventurine is a stone that promotes joy and happiness. It helps our inner child to sparkle and come alive, so that we rediscover our sense of humour and curiosity, our sense of adventure and our appreciation for life.

Smoky Quartz helps us to let go of old patterns and negative thoughts, and to feel safe with change. It is protective, grounding, and very reassuring.

Guided Meditation for Orienting Soul Awareness – A simple guided meditation to orient your conscious awareness to your beautiful Soul energy. It will help align you to your Highest Expression of Self, making you more magnetic to positive energy, love and abundance in your daily life.

May shows you the beauty within you, and all around you. Expect to see new possibilities, to have unexpected doors open and opportunities and synchronicities light your way. It’s a time for growing self-confidence and personal clarity, and a time for reconnection to the things which give us joy and satisfaction.

“The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Whatever we focus on, we draw to us. Whatever we constantly think about, adding strong emotion to that thought, magnetises us to that thing.

Why then, would we choose to only focus on our worries?

Why would we continuously speak of all our injustices, difficulties and pains?

To think constantly on such difficult things will help us to see more of the same.

When we can find gratitude for something in our lives, no matter how small, and truly feel that thankfulness in our hearts, we begin to come back to a place of flow.

If your life is difficult right now, or simply if you wish to create a life of more abundance and satisfaction, start by cultivating gratitude in your heart.

Start each day from a place of gratitude. Count your blessings. Name at least three things in your life for which you are grateful. They may be small and simple – being grateful for your life, for the sun coming up, for birdsong, or a fresh breeze, or a good cup of tea. Small blessings count just as surely as large ones.

Miracles happen when you make this a regular practice. I know it to be true because of the way gratitude has transformed my own life, and helped me live through hardship with an open heart.

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~ Buddha

There is nothing as magnetic to positive life experiences as a joyful heart. Joy is heart-centred, and is the spiritual expression of happiness. It is centred in deep gratitude and awareness, and it can be generated by the smallest of things.

Take a look back through your gratitude journal and you’ll begin to see how many of the things that give you pause for appreciation are life’s simple moments and pleasures.

When we sit in deep gratitude and appreciation we begin smiling from the inside, laughter and kindness become second nature, and we feel abundant and benevolent towards the world…

Image courtesy of fbcutepic.com

As we have started every day of this Gratitude Challenge let’s begin by amplifying our feel-good appreciation of the many good things in our lives.

List five Blessings in your journal, explaining why you are grateful for each one.

Count your Blessings off on your fingers, summoning positive emotion and saying Thank You from your heart for each one.

Take yesterday’s request for help from underneath your Gratitude Rock. Hold it in your hands and say Universe, Thank you for the help I am receiving with ___________ I believe that the Universe supports me in every way.Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Really feel that energy and gratitude in your own heart. Trust that this help will find its way to you with perfect timing.

Tonight before you go to sleep, hold your Gratitude Rock and affirm I am richly Blessed. I have an Abundance of Good in my life. Visualise one thing you have been grateful for today. Swell that positive energy up in your heart like a beautiful golden light, and give a heart-felt Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to the Universe, then imagine a tiny shower of golden light travelling from your heart into your Gratitude Rock.

Still holding your Gratitude Rock, bless your fellow travellers on this Gratitude Journey by sending them golden light, and saying Thank you. I Bless You. I intend for you Love, Miracles and Abundance. Know that as you are saying this for them, they are also saying this for you. Feel that connection and gratitude and know that there is real love and support for you here. Place your rock back beside your bed, and go to sleep, cocooned in this good energy.

If all you do today is these five steps, know that is enough.

Of course, if you’d like to practice more gratitude, I have a special assignment for you…

This is a gorgeous activity, and one of my favourites. Take yourself to a public place, like a mall, coffee shop, or a bench in a park near where people are walking by. Sit somewhere unobtrusive. When someone walks past, shoot a radiant shower of golden sparks from your heart to theirs and silently bless them with love. You can even send joy and love from your heart to trees, animals, plants, bus-loads of commuters and overhead planes. You might want to say to yourself, “I bless you with love. Know joy today.” If anyone catches your eye, just smile.

Feel your open heart begin to tingle with energy and joy. In that place of energetic connection look around you at the world and you will see that it IS brighter and more beautiful because of YOU.

Today you have acted as an Earth Angel. Your Lightwork has helped contribute to our energetic abundance.

It’s okay to let your face crack open from smiling! Thank the Universe for this amazing experience we call life. Expect an outpouring of feel-good emotion. ♥ Don’t be at all surprised at how the Universe will mirror your love and energetic abundance back to you. You are becoming more and more magnetic to the flow of good and grace.

An affirmation is a simple statement, said in the present tense, that affirms positively a fact or situation that is desirable in your life. You state that thing as if it is already happening, and you repeat that statement many, many times, to imprint the message in your subconscious mind, so that this thing becomes true for you.

Here are some common examples:

Image from affirmart.blogspot

Image from affirmart.blogspot

Image from alexafalk.blogspot

I must admit that when I first heard about affirmations I was quite sceptical.

Stating something as a truth and then repeating that statement often, even if it hadn’t yet shown up in my life, seemed a little daft. If nothing else, I felt fake to be claiming things that weren’t actually true for me yet.

But the experts agreed that affirmations could change your life. What did I have to lose by a little positive thinking?

And this is where my embarrassment comes in…

I created a test affirmation.

I didn’t affirm that I choose health. I didn’t affirm that every day in every way I am getting better and better. I didn’t even affirm that great wealth is mine now.

No. My affirmation was pretty much a deliberate act of ‘New-Age Thinking’ defiance. There was nothing spiritual or enlightened about it at all. I chose it because I expected it to fail miserably.

This is what I chose:

Everything I want is always on special

That’s right. I affirmed that whenever I wanted to buy something, the Universe would provide it for me at a discounted rate.

Image from l3electronics.com

I thought this was hilarious when I made it up. It seemed like the silliest idea in the world. But I dedicatedly repeated my affirmation whenever I thought about it – which was often seeing it made me laugh so much, and seeing I was going through a pretty rotten time financially back then.

The more I affirmed, the more noticeable it became until one day I just accepted this statement as my new reality. Everything I want is always on special.

I’m so well known for this affirmation now among my family and friends that they expect this miracle to roll out for me too! I recently went to the shop to buy some ice-cream for dessert, taking a friend with me. “I knew this would be on special,” she said as she took a tub of heavily discounted premium deliciousness. “I should come shopping with you more often!”

We needed a holiday. A few days ago my husband and I booked a cruise. Why a cruise? We got 78% off the advertised rack rate. And then got a room upgrade!

Image from maritimeheritage.org

When we went to book the airfares QANTAS was having a one day sale, and a return ticket from Brisbane to LA was ridiculously discounted. The travel agent couldn’t believe our good timing. We just smiled, looked at each other and repeated Everything I want is always on special.

Affirmations work. I have plenty of others that I use now too, but my first ever affirmation is still my favourite. It might not be ‘spiritual’ but it’s lots of fun, and it affirms to me that I live in an abundant and benevolent Universe.

Here are some others that I love:

Something wonderful will happen to me today (I love to affirm this when I first wake up – it sets the tone for my whole day!)

If such simple thinking can change your life, and bring positivity and joy, maybe it might be worth you trying some affirmations for yourself. The video at the bottom of this post has some good ideas for affirmations too.

I’m holding you in that good space – wishing you well, wishing you love, joy, health and abundance. Bless xx

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”

There is nothing as radiant and attractive as a joyful heart. Joy is heart centred, and is the spiritual expression of happiness. It is centred in deep gratitude and awareness, even though it can be generated by the most simple of things. It is all about smiling from the inside, breaking open with infectious enthusiasm and zest for life, love and gratitude and rainbow sparks shooting from your eyes, laughter and kindness and feeling abundant and benevolent towards the world…

Activity:

This is a gorgeous activity, and one of my favourites. I call it “Bliss Bombing”. Take yourself to a public place, like a mall, coffee shop, or a bench in a park near where people are walking by. Sit somewhere unobtrusive. When someone walks past, shoot a radiant shower of sparks from your heart to theirs and silently bless them with love. You can even send joy and love from your heart to trees, animals, plants, bus-loads of commuters and overhead planes. You might want to say to yourself, “I bless you with love. Know joy today.” If anyone catches your eye, just smile.

Feel your open heart begin to tingle with energy and joy. In that place of energetic connection look around you at the world and you will see that it IS brighter and more beautiful. YOU contributed to that shift. It’s okay to let your face crack open from smiling! Expect an outpouring of feel-good emotion. ♥

Journalling:

Embark on a rampage of appreciation. Take yourself somewhere that pleases you: propped in bed on comfy pillows, a local coffee house with a hot beverage at your elbow, a park, an art gallery – anywhere that soothes and feeds your soul. Take a moment and breathe in that comfort, and allow yourself to feel connected to your heart. Feel grateful for each breath, for where you are right now, for the time of day, and the weather, for the goings-on around you. Let the worries of the day fade away. Say to yourself, “I choose to recommit to myself. I choose to see the joy in life.”

In this place of connection open your journal and begin with the words, “I am aware of small miracles and wonders around me everywhere. In fact right now there is… “

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

– Dalai Lama

This week I’m going to focus on all things to do with the Heart Chakra. We’re going to have a heart-centred week. Starting tomorrow there will be activities, meditations and journalling techniques to help you to explore, heal and connect with your heart centre, and to attract more love into your life. I’ll also be doing work for you in my own daily healing meditations

In this space of greater connection with our hearts we have increased self love and self worth. We can attract loving relationships with others, and we move to a more positive emotional space.

Working with the energies of the heart also increases our intuition and psychic connection.

At the end of this week I shall also be giving away a beautiful Heart Chakra healing necklace, that uses crystals chosen specifically for their ability to work with the heart, including bloodstone, nephrite, jasper, green aventurine, prehnite, hematite and pearls.

To have a chance to win the necklace you just need to leave a comment after one of this week’s blog posts.

I hope you join me for this heart-centred week! Life is precious. Live from the heart. Love and Light, Nicole xx

6 February update: The winner of the necklace is Suzie Cheel. Congratulations!

A few years ago I suffered a heart attack. It was induced by a virus, and it absolutely floored me. I ignored the symptoms the evening they began, and it was not until late the next day that I took myself to hospital. As I lay in Accident and Emergency with doctors and nurses fussing round me, and then as I lay on my own, wired up to all manner of machines in a curtained cubicle I had this sudden realisation – This is serious andI might actually die! I wasn’t afraid of dying. What bothered me were my regrets.

I lay in that cold room, and counted the hours as they slid by. One thing blazed in front of me the whole time – I hadn’t spent enough time just hanging out with my husband, and I hadn’t written a book. My life had been brought into stark focus. The two things that mattered the most to me were the things to which I’d devoted the least energy.

There was no ignoring my heart as it kicked and bucked and clenched. I was lucky there was no lasting damage, and I came home to begin my recovery.

Almost a year later to the day I got a small paralysis tick in my ear. At the time it was a mild inconvenience. But that tiny beastie sparked off cardiomyopathy in me. I now have a big fat heart. It’s improved over time, but my heart still tweaks me now and again. I’m affected by heat, and find it hard to carry loads or walk up steep hills.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? I don’t think of it like that. I think of it as a constant reminder to live with the right priorities. Since my heart attack I have now written three completed manuscripts and am working on a fourth. I had two of them shortlisted for the QWC Hachette Manuscript Development Program. I spend plenty of time with my husband, and other people I care deeply about, and much less time with people who don’t matter.

We’re all going to die. We don’t know when this crazy ride might end for ourselves or someone we love. I’ve learned the value of life, and I actively seek joy and cultivate gratitude. My wish for you, as we move into 2012, is that you find your priorities and fill your life with what matters to you.